Bloom remembers "The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O'Reilly emptying the port into his soup before the flag fell...."
--James Joyce, Ulysses

"My master's gathering herbs upon
The hills somewhere."
(Thus from the pines a child replied)
"I know he's gone,
But cannot tell you more: so wide
Are the mists there."
--Chia Tao, 8th century Chinese poet, in "The Absent Hermit"

Flavoring Agents

Even the most humdrum vegetable soup can be lifted into a new realm by the simple addition of miscellaneous garden, cupboard, or freezer items.
Consider these:

Before serving a hot soup, stir in a spoonful of sesame oil, walnut oil, even peanut or olive oil--or an oil that has been macerated with an ounce of dried mushrooms, hot peppers, or crushed garlic.

SESAME OIL is produced from flat white seeds of an herbaceous annual (sesamum indicum), which have been ground for their oil in non-Hebrew cultures since 2000 BC.

ETHIOPIAN SPICED OIL (or Yetenet'tere zeyt) is made by crushing 2 teaspoons each of chopped garlic, onion, and dried basil and 1 teaspoon chopped ginger root to a mash, then stirring it into 2 cups each of water and oil (sunflower, rapeseed, or olive oil), and boiling until all the water evaporates. Cool, strain, and store in the refrigerator in a tightly covered glass jar.

Even plain butter is sinfully good, but try creaming dollops of butter with fresh or dried herbs and spices--then stirring into the pot just before serving.

"Eat butter first and eat it last,And live till a hundred years be passed."--Dutch proverb

One of the most successful--and ribald--Anglo-Saxon Riddles from the Book of Exeter concerns the making of butter in a butter churn, as follows:

"A young man made for the corner where he knew she was standing; this strapping churl had walked some way--with his own hands he whipped up her dress, and under her girdle (as she stood there) thrust something stiff, worked his will; they both shook. This fellow quickened: one moment he was forceful, a first-rate servant, so strenuous that the next he was knocked up, quite blown by his exertion. Beneath the girdle a thing began to grow that upstanding men often think of, tenderly, and acquire."

The Book of Exeter was bequeathed to the great English Cathedral library by Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter, when he died in 1072 AD.

Really just variations of your basic herb butter. Traditional Italian pesto is made from fresh basil, olive oil, parmesan, garlic, and pinenuts, but you can make it with any fresh kitchen herb--freeze it--then chip it out as you need it. Try substituting mint and parsley for the basil--goat cheese for the parmesan--and walnut oil for the olive oil.

Frozen pestos are the perfect solution for bumper crops of summer herbs, but now they can be made year round, thanks to the advent of fresh herbs in supermarkets. Add to soup at the last minute to make sure it keeps its fresh color and flavor. Here's a basic recipe:

In a blender or food processor, blend all ingredients until green and smooth. It's light and can be swirled on top of soup servings--floating like a bathing beauty and just as zingy. Use to garnish hearty soups.

Their stories resonate through the centuries and connect you with your forebears, who were struggling then, at least as much as you now, to make sense of the world and to defend against sickness and old age.

"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it."--Proverbs 15:17

In ancient Egypt, they were used as magic and as embalments. By the 1st century AD, Dioscorides had begun cataloguing them in De Materia Medica.

In medieval England, herbs were plentiful, thanks to Roman imports, and "wort" was their generic name--as in "mugwort." As the Dark Ages deepened, however, the delicate specimens brought by the Romans withered away in most gardens and were only preserved in a few monasteries, where they became overlayed with heavy Christian symbolism. How were these herbs put to use? Mugwort, elder, dandelion, and ivy were used by the monastic cellarer to flavor ale. Scholars used the dye plants for ink to illuminate manuscripts. Fraterers and the guest house master needed the sweet ones to counteract the fetid household smells--sprinkling them on floors, deodorizing clothes and carpets, burning them in fireplaces. In the refectory, pot herbs were used to disinfect and flavor rancid meat--an alarming thought--and to spice limited diets and aid in digestion. The almoner needed herbs as medicines for the sick and dying. And the chamberlain used them freely to repel insects and rodents. All in all, more use than most moderns ever thought about.

By the 15th century, the English couldn't live without thinking and writing about them. Witness the following tomes: The Feate of Gardening (1440) by Mayster John Gardener. A Newe Herball (1551) by Dr. William Turner, Dean of Wells and the Father of English Botany. In 1597, John Gerard, gardener to the Lord High Treasurer, published an herbal based on the work of Flemish botanist Remvert Dodeons. John Parkinson was prolific, publishing Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris in 1629 and An Universal and Complete Herbal in 1640. Nicholas Culpeper's The English Physician in 1652 pretty much cemented all the English knew about the medical uses of herbs.

Their names are legion--their uses heavenly--and universal. Reaching back to Biblical times, spices (or in Hebrew besamim) were among the ingredients of the incense used in the Temple in Jerusalem--and they were inhaled after meals, which is likely the basis of smelling spices at the end of the Jewish Sabbath--later interpreted as a fortification of the body after the departure of the "additional soul" enjoyed on the Sabbath. Thus spice boxes became part of Jewish ritual art. (In the Middle Ages, Jews played a part in the enormously lucrative spice trade between Asia and Europe and several Jewish Antwerp families founded rich firms at the beginning of the 16th century based on this trade.)

It was the gastronomic need for them that sent Romans from Arsinoe in Egypt around Arabia, dotting along the Persian coast, to reach Barbaricum, India, and its covetted pepper and spices. By the time Roman sailor Hippalus discovered a direct monsoon route from Aden to India in 45 AD, the Romans were well on their way to bankrupting their empire to acquire these luxury items.

It was also this lust for spices that sent Columbus to the New World in 1492--and Vasco da Gama around Africa to reach Calicut, India, in 1498.

Why such a fuss? Certainly to disguise the taste of bland and rotting food in those days before refrigeration. But, more, for their supposed medical properties, for their romance, and--so what else is new?--to stimulate sexual appetites.

As Carson Ritchie writes in Food in Civilization, "Thanks to the teachings of Arab medicine, Europeans now believed that spieces were a panacea, able to promote longevity and ward off infection. Plague doctors walked through the pest-riden streets of Europe holding to their noses a 'pomander,' or dried orange studded with cloves. After a hard day's battle, Charles the Bold of Burgundy would order enough bodies to be cleared from the battlefield to let him sit down and drink a cup of the hot spiced wine as a restorative. Spices could also increase virility--or so it was believed by the Arabs. During his travels in the East in 1500, Ludovico de Varthema, a Portuguese commercial spy, had been told that Arab women gave their lovers pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and spices as an aphrodisiac."

In any case, here's an inventory of the excess of spices found in the kitchen of 14th century Jeanne d'Evreux, widow of Charles the Fair of France: "3 bales of almonds, 6 pounds of pepper, 13 and 1/2 pounds of cinnamon, 23 and 1/2 pounds of ginger, 5 pounds of cardamom, 3 and 1/2 pounds of cloves, 1 and 1/2 pounds of saffron, 1/4 pound of long pepper, 3/8 pound of mace, 1/8 pound of powdered cinnamon, 5 pounds of cumin, and 20 pounds of sugar in 4 sugar loaves.

Aromatic bitters, which were created in the 19th century, but go back to medieval apothecary potions. Made up of herbs and roots in a distilled alcohol base, bitters are excellent for flavoring in fruit or seafood soups. They stimulate the appetite and help soothe the effects overeating or overdrinking. They can include gentian, rhubarb, chamomile, saffron, and juniper berries.

Vinegars: rice and grape wine vinegars; fruit vinegars; herb vinegars; garlic or onion vinegars; mushroom vinegars--all can be bought or made in a snap

NOTE ON WINES IN SOUPS: Don't put them in tart or piquant soups. Unless you're making a cream or egg-enriched soup, or are using it as a base, don't add wine until you are ready to serve the soup--otherwise you will boil away the flavor and lose the heady aroma altogether.